


Repairs

by m_class



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: 5+1 Things, Away Missions, Blood, Burns, Carrying, Culber Lives, Fluff, Forehead Kisses, Friendship, Gen, Georgiou Lives, Huddling For Warmth, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, I am hurt/comfort trash first and people second, Injury, Post Season/Series 01, What did I do?, Why?, if I wanted them in the fic I could have just set it before their canon deaths, imo does not quite warrant the ‘graphic depictions of violence’ tag but, mention of Keyla Detmer/Joann Owosekun, not that, relationships, spite, there is one bloody post-fight injury so I decided to err on the side of caution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 15:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16370153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_class/pseuds/m_class
Summary: 5 times Michael Burnham’s loved ones got hurt + 1 time she did.





	Repairs

**Author's Note:**

> In this fic, Georgiou and Culber are both alive and stationed on the Discovery (Georgiou as a tactical consultant rather than as its commanding officer) along with the rest of the crew post-Season 1. Also, though I usually ignore novel canon, the idea that Georgiou is a former field medic definitely makes an appearance in this story. 
> 
> Takes place in the same universe as my Joann x Keyla (and Culber Lives) fic [Falling Tides](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15775800), and my Georgiou Lives fic [Rainstorm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16194077), but you don’t need to have read them before reading this. (Wow, does this mean I have my own ficverse now? I guess I DO) 
> 
> I’m not a medical professional and did very little research when writing this so, like, please don’t take medical advice from this fic. 
> 
> On that note, though: in my lifelong quest to get people to take real-life head injuries seriously, I would like to remind yall that they are a big deal and, since we don’t have tricorders, to avoid moving someone with a serious head or neck or back injury until someone with medical training can take a look at them. And, for the love of everything, even more minor head injuries can be life/health-threatening so please get them checked out promptly by a medical provider (ANY loss of consciousness or concussion symptoms are a big deal!)
> 
> Okay, thank you for your attn to this PSA and on with the silly space fic!~

“How are the repairs coming, Ensign?” Paul calls from the floor under the helm of the shuttle, where he is lying on his back, attempting to rewire enough connections to get the damaged craft off the ground.

“About a quarter done,” Sylvia calls back, her voice muffled from her position half-inside the shuttle’s rear engine panel.

“Commander?”

“Still trying to get a signal,” Michael tells him, not taking her eyes off her work as she painstakingly tweezes another capacitor into place.

“Well, the helm repairs are going more quickly than I thought they would. We should be able to lift off before nightfall.”

Michael is opening her mouth to say that if that’s true, it might be the first she’s ever heard of someone completing a repair in _less_ than the time they’d estimated it would take, when, all of a once, there is the quiet _whumf_ of an explosion and Sylvia screams.

Time is frozen as Michael leaps to her feet and sprints for the back of the shuttle, tweezers and components flying everywhere. Sylvia is still lying half-in and half-out of the wall, and Michael grabs her by the ankles, pulling her out of the smoking cavity. Sylvia blinks at her, gasping with the pain of the first- and second-degree burns that cover her face and neck. Not only is she alive, she appears relatively unharmed for a woman who just had part of a warp-powered shuttle blow up in her face. Time starts to move again.

“Hey, Sylvia, you’re okay,” Michael says, leaning over Sylvia and keeping her voice loud and clear. “You’re going to be okay.”

Sylvia makes a strangled sound of pain, then croaks, “Michael?”

“I’m right here. You have some burns but you’re going to be okay,” Michael tells her soothingly. “We’re going to get you all fixed up.”

Paul, who appeared at Sylvia’s side milliseconds after Michael did, leaps away again, popping a medkit out of its compartment and pulling it open as he hurries back. Michael pulls out her own tricorder and scans Sylvia, still talking to her in a clear, soothing voice. “Lieutenant Stamets and I are right here. We’re going to get you fixed up in no time.”

The tricorder reports no internal injuries, and a little more of the frozen fear melts away from Michael’s heart. The ocular blast damage appears to be minimal; the explosion itself must not have been very close to Sylvia’s face. She reports this to Paul, keeping her voice calm and even, as he pulls out the medical tricorder and begins a more detailed scan of the damage to Sylvia’s skin.

“Michael?” Sylvia says again, her voice tight with pain.

“I’m right here,” Michael repeats gently. Even after all her years among humans in Starfleet, tactile reassurance still isn’t quite instinctive for her, but a memory floats to the surface of her mind, the time she woke up in sickbay to find Sylvia holding her hand.

Sylvia’s right hand is curled next to her face, red and blistering, but her left hand is lying uninjured by her side. Michael takes it gently in her own, repeating, “I’m right here. You don’t need to do anything, just lie still and Paul will get you fixed up in no time.”

“Don’t worry, Ensign,” Paul says gruffly as he roots through the medkit. “You all may ordinarily only get to see my superfluously accomplished scientific skills, but one doesn’t live with one of the best doctors in Starfleet without picking up a few things.”

“I’m sure Hugh will appreciate being included in your self-aggrandizement, Lieutenant,” Michael says. The corner of Sylvia’s mouth lifts slightly, causing a little more relief to warm Michael’s heart, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Paul’s face relax into small answering smile as well.

The regenerater whirs softly as Paul begins regenerating Sylvia’s burned skin. Michael thinks back over all the times she has spent sitting with injured crewmates; how some people need to know exactly what is happening to them while others need to be distracted from the immensity of the pain.

If there’s one thing Michael knows, it’s that the only true way to tell what any given person needs is to ask.

“Would you like me to tell you what Paul is doing as he does it,” she asks gently, “or would you like me to tell you a story about my brother?”

“Brother,” Sylvia whispers, after a moment’s consideration.

“All right.” Michael gives Sylvia’s hand a light squeeze and begins, “It all started when Spock wanted to leave school early to go to the last day of an exhibit at the science museum, but Amanda wouldn’t sign his permission form, so he came to me with the form and his crayons…”

***

From half a meter above Michael, she can hear Keyla crying--quick, professional sobs. She has already extracted a verbal report of Keyla’s condition--a graze from an energy weapon and a badly sprained ankle--and, as she takes a deep breath and tries once again to squeeze her way out from under the crumpled shelving unit trapping her, Michael wishes she knew whether words of comfort would be welcome, or if Keyla would rather Michael pretend not to hear the quiet sounds of her distress.

If it were almost anyone else on the ship, injured and trapped in hearing distance of Michael after a firefight, she would be talking them through their pain, trying to sooth them and distract them until help arrived. But--even now, after Keyla stood to support Michael’s second mutiny; even now, after they finally talked, and eventually began eating lunch together sometimes; even now, now that their relationship is warm again and they share mutual friends--she still finds herself unsure whether Keyla would find being reassured by Michael comforting or infuriating. If pressed, Michael would have to admit that, while their relationship finally feels comfortable, she’s still a little on edge, getting used to their relationship _being_ comfortable again. And the smoking, sparking damage done to the Discovery as its crew slowly fights off the hostile boarding party feels like an all-too-salient reminder of the day of Michael’s first mutiny; the day that altered the course of both their lives, and not for the better.

Michael makes another attempt to free herself, then slumps back, sweat trickling down her forehead. She is trapped, and Keyla is trapped, and, with nothing left to her but her words, she cannot silently abandon Keyla to her pain. It isn’t who she is.

Nothing that sounds like comfort for Keyla’s tears, though. Keyla is just as emotionally collected as Michael is right now, sobbing from overwhelming physical pain rather than fear, and Michael knows on a deep level how key it is to acknowledge that.

“We should only need to wait a few more minutes,” she tells her, pitching her voice loud enough to be heard through the debris between them. “The battle was already going our way before our firefight, and the first thing anyone will do once they have time is search for injured crew, even while the battle is still happening. We don’t have long to wait.”

“I know,” Keyla says, and it’s not a snarky _I know_ but a grateful one, tinged with pain and filled with relief at the reminder. “I know.”

Another long minute passes, filled by silence and quiet sobs. “Not long now,” Michael repeats.

“I know,” Keyla says softly again, then, “Thank you, Michael.”

There is the sound of a door opening manually, then footsteps sprinting toward them and Sylvia’s voice. “Keyla! Michael!”

For the next few minutes, Michael listens as Keyla reports and Sylvia gently pulls her free before lifting the twisted shelving unit so that Michael can wriggle out from under it. After a quick reunion hug, Michael is able to sell Sylvia on the idea that yes, she really is uninjured, and Sylvia turns her attention to Keyla.

“All right, you’re supposed to elevate an injury, so we’ll just pull this over here…” As she speaks, Sylvia yanks a low pallet towards them, taking off her uniform jacket and folding it into quarters to create a makeshift cushion on top of its edge. “And pop your foot up here, Keyla,” she finishes, gently guiding Keyla’s leg onto the cushion-topped crate. “I want to be able to tell Joann that we took good care of you. All right, that’s 'elevation.' What are the other things you’re supposed to do for an injured limb, RICE, that’s the acronym. ‘Rest’—all right, you’re resting—‘ice’—we’ll just have to, uh, handle that part later—c-something—and ‘elevation.’ What’s the C stand for? Rest, ice, _something…_ ”

Michael frowns. “Rest, ice, elevation...rest ice, elevation…”

“Caffeine?” Sylvia suggests brightly.

“Not caffeine,” Keyla mumbles, a slight smile crossing her features through the pain.

Michael chuckles in spite of herself. “I suppose you’ll be able to enlighten us?”

“Compression,” Keyla says, still smiling. “But we don’t have to worry about that one right now, either.”

“Sounds good,” Michael says gently, removing her own jacket. “I’m just going to slip this under your head, all right, Keyla?”

“Thanks.”

“How are you feeling? Any other pain we should know about?”

“Aside from a bump on the elbow, I think it’s just the graze and the ankle,” Keyla responds, closing her eyes as she relaxes into the jacket pillow.

“That’s good to hear,” Michael says. “How’s this position? Do you want us to help you adjust anything?”

Keyla shakes her head, and Michael relaxes slightly, leaning back against the fallen shelves and sharing a quick, relieved smile with Sylvia as they shelter in place amid the wailing of the red alert.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if caffeine _was_ the C, though?” Sylvia asks quietly, after a few seconds.

Keyla smiles again. “Absolutely.”

***

Michael drops to the ground and rolls, sending a phaser blast in the direction of her opponent, who cries out and drops their dagger, stumbling backward in retreat. Jumping to her feet, she runs around toward the other side of the the shuttle, phaser at ready, but the rest of the attackers appear to have fled back into the forest around them.

Paul and Philippa are still pointing their phasers after their attackers, panting and pivoting in place to make sure the enemy force is gone, while Sylvia is leaping to her feet, winded but unharmed. Hugh, however, is lying unconscious at the edge of the clearing, blood from a long gash on his side spreading rapidly across his uniform.

Michael runs toward him, but Philippa is already there, cutting away Hugh’s jacket with a smooth flick of her knife and sticking her fingers in the place where blood is most dramatically spurting, pinching the artery closed. “Burnham, medkit,” she orders.

Michael wheels, running into the shuttle and grabbing the nearest medkit off the wall. By the time she’s back outside, Paul is kneeling next to Philippa with his hand on Hugh’s cheek, telling him to hang on. Dropping to her knees next to them, Michael opens the medkit and points the regenerator at Hugh’s wound, directing it first to seal the spurting artery, then to heal enough tissue to stop the rest of the bleeding.

Philippa removes her hands from the wound, wiping them quickly on her jacket before grabbing the medical tricorder for a scan.

“Keep regenerating the tissue,” she tells Michael, setting the tricorder down and giving Hugh a hypospray.

“What should I do?” Paul asks blankly. Sylvia is hovering behind him, a phaser still in her hand.

“It will only be ten minutes until the Discovery is in transporter range,” Philippa says firmly, pitching her voice to address all three of them. “Until then, we will treat for shock and blood loss. Tilly, monitor sensors to make sure we won’t be getting any more visitors, and inform the ship of our status as soon as they are in range. Stamets, get the heated blankets and the portable oxygen mask from the aft storage compartment.”

Paul darts toward the shuttle, and in the minutes that follow, Michael lets herself focus on the work of regenerating tissue, only tangentially aware of Philippa and Paul setting up the oxygen mask and Sylvia comming the Discovery.

“He’s doing well,” Philippa tells Paul gently, scanning Hugh again as his eyelids flutter.

True to Philippa’s words, it’s only twelve minutes before Dr. Pollard, a nurse, and two field medics appear in the swirl of the transporter beam. Michael crisply summarizes the work she’s done with the regenerator, then moves away from Hugh as the medics bustle around him, preparing him for transport.

“We’ll stay here to pilot the shuttle back to the ship,” Philippa is telling Dr. Pollard. “But I believe Lieutenant Stamets will want to beam up with you. Especially,” she adds, smiling suddenly, “now that Hugh is awake…”

Turning, Michael sees that Hugh has opened his eyes, blinking in confusion.

“Paul?” Philippa says gently, beckoning him forward, and he stumbles to his partner’s side, taking Hugh’s hand as his eyes drink in Hugh's face. Michael feels as though she is watching something radiant yet intimate; entire galaxies of love and terror, relief and hope spinning and collapsing in Paul’s eyes.

“Hey, baby,” he whispers.

Hugh smiles weakly. “Hey.”

“We’re beaming up to sickbay now, but I’ll be right here. I always will,” Paul tells him softly, bending to press a kiss to Hugh’s forehead.

Hugh smiles, his eyes drifting closed as Dr. Pollard calls for beamout and she, Hugh, Paul and the rest of the medical team disappear in a golden transporter beam.

Sylvia sags slightly against the side of the shuttle as the last glimmer of the transport vanishes, letting out a long, relieved breath. “I’m glad you were here, Captain Georgiou. I mean, we definitely could have handled things, I’m not saying any of us don’t know what we’re doing, but that was actually a really really pretty bad situation and it was so helpful and amazing how you were able to stay, you know, cool, calm and collected the entire time.”

Philippa winks at her. “Cool, calm and collected. That’s me.”

***

“Michael,” Philippa mumbles, “you’re floating. Please stop it.”

Scanning Philippa’s swollen ankle with her tricorder, Michael sighs. “Don’t worry, Philippa, I’m definitely not floating. I’m right here beside you.” She raises three fingers on her right hand, holding it in front of Philippa’s face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Philippa stares for a moment, then narrows her unfocused eyes, lips moving as she tries to count.

“All right, I think that answers my question.” Michael scoops up Philippa’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Everything’s going to be all right, Philippa.”

Philippa makes a confused sound of acknowledgement as Sylvia rounds the side of a nearby boulder and heads for them, tricorder in hand. “All right, there shouldn’t be any more seismic activity for a while, but we should probably try to get back to open ground if we can.” She crouches next to Michael and Philippa. “How is she?”

“She has a head injury and a broken ankle, but it should be safe move her,” Michael says. “I’m going to carry her to the rendezvous point.”

“You won’t be able to lift me,” Philippa says, jabbing a finger in what she probably thinks is Michael’s direction. “I’m 163 centimeters of solid muscle!”

“What you are is concussed,” Michael says, rolling her eyes internally. Clipping the tricorder to her belt, she slides one arm under Philippa’s knees and the other under her shoulders, looping Philippa’s left arm around her neck. “Philippa, can you grab on to my shoulder?”

“I can do _anything_ ,” Philippa tells her in a tone of great self-satisfaction, not grabbing on to her shoulder.

“Sylvia?” Michael says helplessly.

Sylvia lays her hand over top of Philippa’s, squeezing Philippa’s hand and Michael’s left shoulder beneath it. “Just hold on to Michael, okay, Captain?”

The words seem to stick, because Philippa thankfully maintains her grip after Sylvia lets go, and Michael slowly rises to her feet. Philippa is indeed heavy for her size, and if the situation required more speed Michael might have been forced to flop her over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry, but she doesn’t like the idea of Philippa bouncing along upside down with a concussion, not if she doesn’t have to be.

“Ensign Tilly?” Philippa says, as Michael and Sylvia begin to walk away from the foothills toward the open plains.

“Yes, Captain Georgiou?” Tilly responds attentively.

“You might already know this, but Michael is a _wonderful_ Starfleet officer,” Philippa announces. “She’s smart and efficient and quick-thinking. And she’s carrying me right now!”

“Yes, she is, isn’t she?”

“She hasn’t been making enough time to train lately, though. She needs to work on her punches. Her uppercut especially. And her kicks.” Philippa kicks her own legs idly back and forth, making Michael groan. “Other than that? Wonderful. Smart _and_ efficient _and_ quick-thinking.”

“Philippa, I will spar with you every day for a week if you _stop moving right now.”_

“See?” Philippa tells Sylvia delightedly. Michael isn’t sure whether Philippa is presenting this bargain as an example of Michael being smart, Michael being efficient, or Michael being quick-thinking, but Sylvia, apparently unperturbed by the ambiguity, responds cheerfully, “Yes, Michael _is_ wonderful, isn’t she?”

As the three officers make their way out of the foothills and onto the plains, Michael can already feel her muscles aching, but she doesn’t mind. She’s with two of the people she loves most in the universe, who are safe and mostly unharmed, and she has it in her power to keep them that way.

She’ll consider this an impromptu upper-body workout. When Philippa comes back to her senses, maybe she’ll even be impressed enough to stop her perennial teasing about Michael’s supposedly weak uppercut for a while.

***

“Why do you think they came back?” Paul asks, fingers tapping furiously at the sensor readings on his workstation.

“I don’t know.” Michael stares at the image on the viewscreen of the interdimensional being materializing and de-materializing off their starboard bow. “What this crew did to Ripper after we captured them...we tortured them. I have no idea why they’d come back to us.”

“Maybe they want revenge?” a nearby ensign asks nervously.

Michael shakes her head. “They never attacked anyone except in self-defense. The whole time they were on this ship, they only ever wanted to get away.” She stares out at the flickering form. “They’re not doing anything except...trying to materialize, I think. Paul,” she says sharply, turning toward him, “what if they’re injured?”

“Injured?”

“There’s no way to know for certain without communicating with them, but the reason they’re flickering back and forth could be that something happened to them that’s affecting their ability to materialize. And then there’s the fact that they returned to _us._ We’re the people that hurt them, but some of us also helped them, and they know we have spores.”

“That sounds plausible, Commander,” comes Hugh’s voice from behind her, and Michael smiles. Paul must have summoned him to Engineering as soon as Ripper appeared.

Paul nods slowly. “So, how does one diagnose a tardigrade? We have their previous readings, but they're too far away for sensors to get equivalently detailed current readings to compare them to. Do you think we should take a shuttle out; try to get closer?”

Hugh raises a hand to his chin, thinking. “Ordinarily, I would want to make a diagnosis before attempting to treat a patient. But given how traumatic this being’s last interaction with our crew was, I worry that such a course of action would go against our edict to ‘do no harm.’” He stares at the viewscreen in silence for a moment. “Paul, when they were captive here, your spores helped them heal their wounds after they were connected to the drive. And...much like air and water for us, spores are an inherent part of this being's natural environment. Except in surpassingly rare circumstances, no humanoid could be harmed by skin contact with substances like air or water in their purified, room-temperature state. If it’s very unlikely the spores will cause harm, and very likely that they might offer the being some relief, maybe we should release some spores out of the starboard vents.”

Paul thinks for a minute, then nods. “Commander?” he asks, looking to Michael for permission.

Michael nods. “Do it.”

As the spores filter out of the ship, sparkling against the darkness of the cosmos, Michael finds herself holding her breath, hoping against hope that this will work; that this will at least _help_ _;_ that the creature so badly wronged by the Discovery in the past will not be failed by its crew today.

She glances at Hugh, who has taken over scrutinizing Paul’s monitor as Paul supervises the release of the spores. His expression is calm and focused, and she feels a rush of gratitude for his presence, past and present. All the time Michael has served alongside Hugh, from the worst days of the war to today, he has analyzed situations decisively and with compassion--similarly, in some ways, to the way Philippa handles things. 

She wonders if Hugh has ever thought about going into command.

“Look,” he breathes. Michael looks.

Ripper’s outline is steadying, the spores glimmering around them as they materialize fully at last. They stretch happily--well, it may not be happiness, Michael reminds herself; it’s important not to ascribe humanoid emotions to life-forms whose body language may be very different from humanoids; but the motion certainly reads as healthy and positive--and then perform a few languid dives and rolls, cavorting among the clouds of spores. Michael grins.

“Seems like we were able to help,” Hugh says, smiling.

“Yes,” Michael says softly, “it does.”

Ripper executes another barrel roll before pausing for a moment, a little closer to the ship, as though in salute. Then, all at once, they dematerialize once more in a flash of light across the starfield.

“I’m glad you were here to help make the call, Michael,” Hugh says. It’s exactly what she was just thinking about him, and she looks at him in surprise. He smiles at her, his eyes serious and filled with care. “Today, and the last time Ripper was here, too.”

***

“Michael?”

The voice is familiar, seeping into Michael’s consciousness from far away, distant and echoing.

_“Michael!”_

There’s something bothering her about the voice and its echo, something she needs to _realize_ , but in a haze of sleep and darkness, she can’t place what it is.

“Michael! _Are you down there!”_

The voice is firm and strong, but with an undercurrent of fear, fear that is uncharacteristic of its speaker. Speaker. Uncharacteristic. _Philippa._

Michael’s eyes blink open and she stares into the dimness above her as she tries to put together the puzzle pieces of sight and sound and recent memory. Philippa. Darkness. Echoes--

She gasps, trying to sit up, only to groan as a sharp pain shoots through her ribs.

The stones moved. She was making her way through the jagged landscape, just out of sight of the rest of the away team, and the stones moved.

Now, she is lying in the darkness of a cavern barely bigger than a walk-in closet. Her arm aches and her chest burns. When she turns her head to the side, she can see dim light shining down from a sloping tunnel in the cavern’s roof.

“Philippa?” she calls. Her voice sounds small in the darkness, and she tries again. “Philippa?”

“Michael!” Philippa’s voice fills with relief. “Are you injured?”

In the darkness of the tiny cavern, Michael uses her good arm to pull herself towards the opening. Cloudy daylight hits her face, and she can see Philippa peering into the opening of the sloped tunnel, perhaps ten meters above. Her posture changes as Michael comes into view, leaning further towards Michael, though Michael can’t see the expression on her face, backlit against the grey sky.

“I hit my head,” Michael calls, “and I think I’ve fractured my arm and my ribs. No bleeding.”

“All right, Michael,” Philippa calls calmly, in the voice she uses to make decisions and give orders, “Detmer and I are going to go get climbing gear from the shuttle. Stamets and Tilly will stay here with you.”

“Okay,” Michael says. There is the faint sound of conversation above her, then a moment of silence.

“Michael?” Sylvia’s voice. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Move out of the way of the tunnel, okay?”

“Okay.” Wondering what they’re going to send down to her, Michael crawls a meter to the left, huddling against the cold rock wall.

“Are you out of the way?”

“Yes.”

There is a scraping, whooshing noise, and all at once, Sylvia is landing next to Michael in a semi-controlled heap on the hard ground. Which is, of course, exactly how Michael broke her arm, ribs, and, she is beginning to suspect, collarbone.

“Are you alright?” she gasps.

“Fine!” Sylvia reports cheerfully. “Unlike some people, I didn’t slide down here backwards and unintentionally.”

“Why _did_ you slide down here, Tilly?” Michael hisses in disbelief. “Now we’re both trapped!”

“Captain Georgiou said I could!” Sylvia retorts.

Michael blinks. _“Why?”_

“Because _you’re injured,_ Michael,” Sylvia says, whipping a medkit off her back as she untangles her arms and legs and peels herself off the ground, “and it’s going to be another twenty minutes before they can get the equipment back here to lift you out.”

Michael bites back the opinion that the risk to Sylvia was far greater than the reward. There’s no use contesting the point now, and besides, now that the urgent need to communicate with her colleagues on the surface is over, she should probably prioritize the fact that talking makes her feel as though her chest is on fire.

“Thanks,” she whispers instead.

Sylvia sticks an emergency light against the stone wall, and its low glow slowly illuminates the tiny cavern. “We’re your friends, Michael,” she tells her, gently but firmly, scanning her with the medical tricorder. “You always take such good care of _us_. We’re _not_ going to _not_ take care of you.”

Michael can feel tears prick her eyes at the unexpected rush of emotion brought on by Sylvia’s words.

“Thanks,” she whispers again.

Sylvia looks up from her scanning to brush the tips of her fingers lightly against Michael’s forehead, smoothing her hair. “Everything’s gonna be okay, Michael. I’m just gonna fix your ribs now, so it doesn’t hurt you when we lift you out of here. I may not be Dr. Culber, but it’s the osteoregenerator’s mapping system that does all the work."

“I trust you, Sylvia,” Michael says softly.

Sylvia smiles in acknowledgement, pulling the osteoregenerator and the tissue regenerator out of the medkit, and for the next few minutes, she works in silence. Michael closes her eyes, feeling the pain in her chest slowly subside.

“You always do, you know. Take such good care of everyone around you,” Sylvia says quietly as she turns her attention to Michael’s arm. “But you’re part of our crew, and you don’t have to be the only one who takes care of people. We’re going to take care of you, too. Always.”

Michael smiles. “Thanks, Sylvia.” As the pain in her arm fades, she can hear voices from overhead.

“Sounds like they’re back!” Sylvia says brightly. “Now, I’m gonna work on your concussion and then repair your collarbone.”

Michael closes her eyes again so that she won’t distract Sylvia by making eye contact as she leans over her. Faintly, she can hear Philippa and Paul setting up the climbing equipment, trying to figure out which rock to attach it to.

“Hm- _hmm!”_ Sylvia says in triumph. “All right, three ribs, one arm, and one head down; one collarbone to go.”

Now Paul and Keyla are bickering about what will be the most efficient way to move the chosen rock closer while Philippa calculates what its optimum placement will be.

“There we are.” There’s a series of clicks as Sylvia piles the tools back into the medkit.

From above, Philippa’s voice echoes faintly down the tunnel. “All right, move it half a meter to the left. No, the other left.”

“Michael?” Sylvia asks. “How are you feeling?”

Michael smiles, shifting slightly. “Better. A little tender, but better.”

Sylvia nods seriously. “I’m sure Dr. Culber will want to see you in sickbay as soon as you get back, to check the inflammation around your injuries and fix every possible scrape and bruise.” She frowns. “You’re shivering. Are you cold?”

Michael hadn’t noticed. “Maybe a little.”

Sylvia rolls her eyes. “‘Maybe a little.’ Hmph. Well, now that you don’t have any injuries to make worse, I can do _this._ ” Lying down on her side, she scooches closer to Michael so that they’re almost, but not quite, touching. “The closer together we are, the more body heat we’ll conserve.”

Michael smiles, reaching for Sylvia and pulling her close. “That sounds like a great idea.”

Now Philippa and Keyla are arguing politely about whose climbing certification is most up-to-date, and whether the fact that Keyla has more spelunking experience makes her a better choice for the rescue descent. Michael rolls her eyes, snuggling closer to Sylvia. The rough stone floor is digging unpleasantly into her back, and her body still aches with the numerous small wounds of her fall, yet somehow, she has never felt more safe.

“This isn’t that bad of an away mission, all in all,” she mumbles into Sylvia’s hair.

“If you say so,” Sylvia replies dubiously.

Michael smiles. “I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Philippa’s directive to Michael is my homage to the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy line that has held up for over a decade as the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever read: “Ford,” he said. “you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.” (Philippa throws a “please” in since she isn’t about to be rude to Michael over a bit of levitation and, in Arthur Dent’s defense, even concussion-induced double vision probably isn’t as viscerally rattling as as your friend transforming into a semiaquatic mammal before your eyes.)


End file.
